[294] Full details of this meeting will be found in the Bengal Hurkara, December 19th, 1823.
[295] The dimensions of the Enterprize were 122 feet length of keel and 27 feet breadth of beam; her paddle-wheels were 15 feet in diameter. She was 479 tons register, 120 horse-power. She was supplied with a copper boiler in one piece, weighing 32 tons and costing 7000l. Her total cost was no less than 43,000l.!
[296] The greatest run the Enterprize made by sail in twenty-four hours, was 211 miles, the least 39 miles; the greatest by steam assisted by sail, 225 miles, the least 80 miles; the greatest heat in the engine-room during the voyage, was 105 degrees, that of the air at the same time being 84 degrees and a half; the total distance was 13,700 miles, and the consumption 580 chaldron of coals, being 9 chaldrons per day for 64 days, the rest being under sail; “the speed of the engines, in calm weather, was 8 knots an hour, the log giving 9 from the wash of the paddles.” Evidence, Mr. T. L. Peacock, Select Committee on Steam Navigation to India, 1834.
[297] Despatches of Sir Miles Nightingall, 1819; Mount-Stuart Elphinstone, 1823-26; Lord William Bentinck, 1828 to 1835; “Annual Register;” Colonel Chesney’s Report, 1832; Proceedings of the Royal Asiatic Society; Captain F. Head’s “Eastern and Egyptian Scenery,” 1833; J. A. St. John, “Egypt and Muhammed Ali,” 1833; Report of the Committee of the House of Commons “On Steam Navigation to India,” 1834; “Egypt in 1837,” by T. Waghorn; Ibid. 1838; Waghorn and Co., “Overland Route to India,” 1844 and 1846; “On Steam Navigation to India,” by Captain Grindlay, 1837; Report of the Committee of House of Commons “On Steam Navigation to India,” 1837; Mr. W. D. Holmes’ plan in connection with the Bengal Steam Committee, 1839; “Modern Egyptians,” by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 1843; “Facts connected with the Origin and Progress of Steam Communication between India and England,” by J. H. Wilson, Commander, Indian Navy, London, 1850; Letter from Mr. R. W. Crawford, M.P. for London, to the Times, November 22nd, 1869; and from Mr. R. H. Galloway to the Illustrated London News, 23rd October, 1872, as well as other communications on the same subject to various journals and periodicals.
[298] See “Facts connected with the Origin and Progress of Steam Communication between India and England,” by J. H. Wilson, Commander Indian Navy, London, 1850.
[299] Captain Wilson says (page 7), writing of this journey, “He (Mr. Mount-Stuart Elphinstone) started from Bombay on the 15th November, 1827, in the Honourable Company’s brig Palinurus, and was accompanied by Mr. C. Lushington, secretary to the Government of Bengal, Mrs. Lushington, Mr. Steele of the Bombay Civil Service, and Messrs. Wallace and Gordon of the Bombay Medical Service. Mrs. Lushington published an interesting account of the journey, thus creating a considerable, though limited, public interest in the route.”
[300] See his evidence before Committee of the House of Commons, 1834, on steam navigation to India; and his book, “Eastern and Egyptian Scenery, &c.,” with notes, maps, and plans, &c., intended to show the practicability of steam navigation from England to India.
[301] Mr. Waghorn, born at Chatham in the year 1800, was brought up in the Royal Navy, where he served four years. He was afterwards, for twelve years a pilot in Bengal in the service of the East India Company, somewhat later rejoining the Royal Navy, wherein he remained till he passed as Lieutenant. Mr. Waghorn had piloted the Enterprize soon after her arrival in India, and from that time devoted his especial attention to steam-vessels. In his evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1834 (page 209), he says with regard to himself, “I was selected in 1827 by the Indian Government (Calcutta Steam Committee) for the purpose of establishing steam navigation between England and India.... My first object was the Cape of Good Hope.... I went to London, Liverpool, and to Manchester; I stated my plans in various parts of the kingdom, and all the success I received after three years’ toil, was the loan of two fifty horse-power engines from the East India Company.” In 1842 he recommended the European route now in use by way of the Adriatic, dying, at length at Pentonville, January 7th, 1850, utterly broken down, and leaving his widow without any means beyond a small pension allowed to her by Government and the East India Company.
[302] See “Annual Register,” October 1829.
[303] Mr. Waghorn, in his evidence before the Committee of 1834, says that, had he met the Enterprize at Suez as he expected, he would have conveyed his despatches from London to Bombay in fifty-three days.